Jobs grew up in a subdivision where all the homes were designed by . Isaacson quotes Jobs as he discusses his appreciation of Eichler’s ability to “bring great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much… It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.” (The Pixar film .)

Isaacson also writes that Jobs took inspiration from the simplicity of the instructions on Atari’s video game, which included only two instructions:

Once Jobs and Steve Wozniak were ready to form a company, they debated over various possible names for their new business; Isaacson writes that they rejected names like Matrix, Executek, and Personal Computers Inc. Jobs: “I was on one of my fruitarian diets [at the time]. Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’ Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book.”